George Best: The Public Gorges on Grief
The public has treated itself to another Diana moment in its response to the latest death of a tormented celebrity.Now that the fever has abated a little, it is possible to tackle the question muttered dozens of times over the past few days. Why this parade of grief over George Best? What does it mean?
The answer - the infernally complex answer - is also simple at heart. We weren't doing it for him; we were doing it for us. We were treating ourselves to a Diana moment.
That Diana delineation owes a great deal to the American media guru Thomas de Zengotita. He sat in his New York office and watched the vast crowds lining the route to Westminster Abbey and he heard the swell of dissent as they took sides: for her, against him and his unfeeling family. It seemed utterly spontaneous. It caught the royals and their advisers flat-footed.
Joe Public was standing up to be counted, to have his demonstration of distress and resentment watched around the globe.
Why should pomp and circumstance come controlled, purveyed only by reverent-voiced BBC commentators, when the people's princess was savagely lost?
Joe Public helped make 15 minutes of famous history that he would always remember - and could tell his grandchildren about. He wasn't anonymous any longer, a speck of humanity brushed away by the rich and powerful.
The death rituals of Diana were a surprise. Nobody - especially not the media - had foreseen what happened when you mixed a cocktail of tabloid romance, majestic melodrama and genuine tragedy. Nobody was prepared for the moment that followed. But how quickly we learn ...
Would the old Queen Mum have her moment too? As commentators measured her age against Diana's youth, it seemed not.
Perhaps Joe P, still brooding, would sit this one out? But no: there at the close was the moment, a queue of condolences winding miles along the Thames.
It was another brief encounter with history, another ad hoc definition of vague, swilling concepts such as nationhood and community.
And so the pace quickens. Pope John Paul II - iconic, controversial, loved, reviled - draws unprecedented throngs to St Peter's Square when he dies.
Rome has never seen scenes to equal this, a city taken over by millions of mourners - and thousands of TV cameras. This is history, isn't it? Father Giuseppe Pubblico and his flock are huge players again. Twenty four-hour cable news churns on.
Where, among such arc-lit sessions of sorrow and so much digitised despair, do balance and reality lie? That particular question has no answer as yet.
There is no reason why ordinary citizens of our increasingly instant wired world shouldn't be allowed to weep alongside their leaders and peers, to bring their own circumstance to traditional pomp. But we're getting ever closer to the edge.
Some even found the mourning for those who died in London's tube bombings overdone: not wrong or insincere, just too much conflated into a national moment.
But Best sets a benchmark along the funeral route. Be clear. He was, for a few years, one of the most charismatic footballers around.
There are a few terrific TV clips of goals he scored 35 years ago. Middle-aged football commentators relive their youth when they talk of him.
The nostalgia of the beautiful game comes drenched in tinted memories. His death is cause for pause, lament and reflection. But to see the Diana moment turned into the Georgie moment is to see the media hearse rolling heedlessly downhill.
Why Best and not Johnny Haynes, say, a few sad weeks ago - or Stanley Matthews when his time came? Because, unlike with Haynes, killed suddenly in a car crash, cable news kept a florid vigil outside Best's hospital, its very presence signalling importance.
Because, unlike Sir Stanley, Best's last years were spent on the pages of the red-tops, swapping blonde wives and mistresses, claiming a new liver, pledging eternal sobriety, breaking his promises.
Put Best alongside quiet, modest Tom Finney. Who was the greater footballer? That's a saloon-bar debate. But there is no debate about who starred most indefatigably in his own real-life soap.
There is nothing strictly logical about the magic that transformed a washed-up footballer into a surrogate Princess of Wales. But there is something calculated, almost cynical, to the process.
The media, surprised by Di's moment, don't want to be surprised again. If Sky News keeps a hospital vigil then BBC News 24 must be there as well.
Call for the obit writers and football sages and video libraries. Kill a few more forests. Order a million black arm bands and minutes of silence in stadiums around the land.
Give Joe Public another chance of "being there", of being part of something he and his kids can remember - like a bit part in reality TV.
But aren't the newspapers railing against 24-hour booze the very ones lauding Georgie? The politicians keenest on "family life" the ones with their heads bowed lowest in the directors' box?
Who's next for the treatment? Bruno, Becks, Posh? No worry: Joe has enough bread to keep him going. Here, with mounting cynicism, is the newest sort of circus.
Don't ask: why George Best? Ask, rather, why not? He was a celebrity as well as a tortured human being, and this - alas - seems the latest way to get him out of here.